Telephone terminals are generally provided with a function called an address book or a telephone book. This function (hereinafter, called an address book function) involves storing pairs of a “telephone number” which is a communication address allocated to each telephone terminal and a “name” which is an identification name of a user who uses the telephone terminal, and displaying these pairs as necessary. When a user uses this address book function to display the name of a desired callee on a telephone terminal and instruct the telephone terminal to make an outgoing call to the telephone terminal of the callee, the telephone terminal performs an outgoing call process based on the telephone number corresponding to the name. Such an address book function is, in most cases, implemented in a communication terminal capable of communicating with the callee by performing communication using some form of communication address, such as an e-mail terminal that transmits and receives e-mail messages, without being limited to a telephone terminal.
Incidentally, the address book function includes a function of registering telephone numbers in a number of categories (groups), such as “friends”, “family”, “colleagues”, “work”, and “associates”, for example. However, because the operation of sorting telephone numbers into such categories is complicated, many users shy away from using this sorting-related function.
In patent document JP 2006-050266A, a proposal is made that involves inferring, based on a pre-registered schedule of a user and a call history of the user, the purpose of calls included in the call history, and sorting telephone numbers by the inferred purpose.
The present invention has been made in consideration of such a background, and has as its object to register pairs of communication addresses of communication terminals and identification names of users separately by group and display these pairs, while reducing the operation load of users.